The Villainous Affiliate Code

I’ve been working on validating my xhtml code for my Blogs for the past several days and I’ll admit that I leave out an “ALT” tag here and forget to close “</a>” there, but by and large I’m really pretty clean ……… except for my “YouTube” code which I can’t validate no matter how hard I try.

One thing that has constantly provided me with a challenge is “The Villainous Affiliate Code”. Just because you sign-up for the latest affiliate product launch and you get all that cool artwork, just keep in mind that doesn’t necessarily come with a guarantee of clean code. On the contrary. I have found that the so-called pro-bloggers with the top products have the worst code.

I was watching a video from Google the other day about the validation question. And it seemed that the general consensus is that while everyone would like to validate, It’s not set in stone that you should or even have to. There really is no SEO penalty, so long as you follow protocol and don’t attempt to code while drunk ( “CUI” ). And as far as browser compatibility; I say as long as I can get it to call in I.E and Firefox, I’m good to go. You iphoners and ipaders’ will have to fend for yourselves.

My issue here is not that the affiliates can’t get the code right. Rather, it’s got me thinking about their products in general. If they can’t get the affiliate links right, what makes you think that 200 pages of affiliate product or E-Book are going to be any better.

Like I said, I myself have a few errors in my code and I continually drive my editors crazy with my writing, ( I just can’t get “your” and “you’re” straight no matter how hard I try ) that said, I do eventually get it right by going over and over the material …….. and code, again and again.

This is just one more red flag that you should be aware of when you are considering an affiliate offer from someone who you are not really all that close with……… that and the failure to pay commissions on sales is a sure clue that things are not as they should be in the “Blogosphere”.